Storytelling and blogging – perspectives and use

From writing blogposts the last one plus decades to moving to creating longer form content, there is a continuity of the journey. Awhile ago I decided to write on Medium before coming back to WordPress and setting up this thing. A few things excited and made Medium more than just content but a platform for creating content.

I felt that Medium had the longer story in mind and writers and creators there were more involved with the longer story. The stories would tell you how long a read was and I felt that it was more in front with the content than a blog was. It also had an amazing assortment of folks busy creating longer form writing that I appreciated. A few things dissuaded me from continuing there though. At that point I had two platforms to write on. I had my self-hosted WordPress site with all the detritus from decades of publishing my drivel and then I had a Medium site with new drivel on it. I felt torn between two competing writing platforms and the energy spent creating split in two seemed counter-productive in a few ways. Why, I wondered, choose to publish a thing on my WordPress blog and then if it were something longer or that I felt was more like a story I would then publish on Medium? I am only one person; not a team of writers or affiliates or content publishers. Its hard enough sometimes to engage in creating on a single platform yet here I was writing on two. I knew one had to go simply because the amount of energy and time to maintain and publish on two discrete writing platforms seemed more than I wanted. I am perhaps lazy but WordPress won out not because it has longer form writing tools because if it does I cannot find it. It won out because of the familiarity I had with writing on WordPress and I felt the community here was richer and more diverse. Medium seemed to descend to 10 reasons why for this and 5 rationales for that type posts. I don’t really care for 10 or 5 things. I want the one thing thing that matters.

I do know people who publish to multiple blogs and separate them by whether its security, open source, personal, general technology, etc. I admire them for the effort at separating their existence into buckets but I have found a thing in one place often crosses over. Where to post then? Both? Kind of self defeating to point people at two places to read the stuff. I’ve seen it separated by type, category, persona. Those people have this amazingly diverse multiple identity thing going and they maintain it over the long haul. Kudos!

So this brings me to the thought of the day. Creating content on the road and presenting a different kind of writing than these curious ordered posts with the latest on the top or a static page welcoming all of you legions of readers to this clumsy place. Perhaps an ad or two sprinkled around for your clicking pleasure.

Its still the same limitation with WordPress. There is no “story” plugin or anything besides creating static pages which then have different rules that I can see. No way to create longer form content so I will most likely create static pages which will show up in my menu as things. There’s no point in trying to find a second tool or platform because my own laziness precludes me trying to create on a multiple of sites.

I’d like to read comments from other WordPress bloggers who create longer form content how they handle it. Separate static pages? Buy up to the business class plan and get a custom theme? Find another platform to create stories on?

To kick the can forward a bit, I’ll start testing out the creation of additional static pages with the beginnings of longer form writing I have been toying with. Most are keyed to life type things but I have started cataloging places I want to see, how traveling for us older folks can be challenging in the planning, and what expectations I have (hint: there are none).

If you create longer form writing which you don’t want organized as a series of blog posts, how do you do it? I’ve asked the support community at WordPress a few times and have not found a concrete approach to doing it.